Topic: Who can stand?

Godspeaker

Date: 2014-04-08 09:49 EST
O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue To drown the throat of war! - When the senses Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness Who can stand" When the souls of the oppressed

Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand" When the whirlwind of fury comes from the Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance Drive the nations together, who can stand"

When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle, And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death; When souls are torn to everlasting fire, And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the stain.

O who can stand" O who hath caused this" O who can answer at the throne of God" The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it! Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it! —William Blake

A blackness had come over the sun. The air pulsed with death, shit and blood and piss and tears already spent, never to be again. Beneath her feet the ground had been torn asunder by hooves as well as men's feet, turned filth. Feathers of deepest night fell from the clouds of ravens that sounded akin to distant thunder above her—flapping their wings, screaming over bits of flesh or eyes that had not been freshly plucked. The day was grey but the blood spilled was as red, red, red as the tips of her fingers. As her slack mouth. As her feet, gored to the knees in her stepping over the bodies of the armies. The wind carried nothing but the smell of a thousand graves. The hills, dotted with so many dead for a moment looked as if they were blooming steel.

A severed arm, meat already turning grey tripped her up and she went down. Her hand landed in the ruins of a man's face laid bare as well as crushed by a mace. She heard the sound of it as fingers spread to stop her fall clicked against shattered bone. Beside him, a boy, perhaps not more than fifteen summers stared up at the sky with glassy, forever unseeing eyes. The boy was cut clean in two. She could not see his other half anywhere.

She wanted to scream. To weep. To cry. To mourn. Anything, to...to feel anything. But she had been scraped empty, torn inside. All that answered her now was silence. Silence and the shrieks of ravens devouring bits and pieces of men. She scrambled to her feet not looking at the globules stuck to her fingers. If she did not look at it, it was not there. But how...how...how...how could she not look all around her" How could she not see" Where is the Zara'karr, desperately thought. She must find him. She must find him....surely the gods would not forsaken her entirely' Surely, he must be here somewhere.

Her pace quickened. Over broken sword or body alike she scrabbled like a bone-picker might when rifling through the pockets of those who no longer needed them. There were no bone-pickers anymore, of course. They too, were all dead.

She must find the Zara'karr. She must find where he lay. If she could, then she could fix this. Fix all of it.

Above her, the ravens only screamed louder.

Godspeaker

Date: 2014-04-08 13:34 EST
1123, Year of the Wolf Twenty third year of Zara'karr Issen's reign

I did not know my parents. I assume, like many parents of those who became Speakers in the very distant past, they were quietly paid handsomely for their contribution to the realms and then carted off by those in charge of secret things to a place where they would live quietly. And where they would be watched to safeguard against them being able to place a claim upon me ever again.

I do not remember them at all. When I was terribly young I believed that my Nansa, a warm, round woman of ruddy cheeks and curly golden hair was my mother. I did not realize it until my fourth-name day that she wasn't. Because that was when my training began. That was when they took me from Nansa. Nansa, who I believed had loved me dearly. Nansa who did nothing as they drug me from her but stare at the floor, sobbing.

It was then my teachers told me what I was. Not who, but what. They taught me early that I am not a who. I am a what. I am a tool. An arrow. A sword. A weapon and a voice—but certainly never a person.

A person has selfish desires. A person makes decisions based on self. A person does not think of the whole.

I was no longer a person. I was a Speaker.

I was a child and despite being angry with my teachers for taking me away from my Nansa, I wished to please them. I wished with everything in my body to make them praise me and be proud. It is the way of children and adults. It is the way of a small person. I wanted them to love me. But love is the dream of a child—of a person.

I was not a person. I was a Speaker.

Godspeaker

Date: 2015-04-30 01:20 EST
1105, Year of the Dragon Sixth Year of Zarak'karr Issen's Reign

Kellem replaced Nansa. Kellem did not show me kindness or regard. There were no soft touches anymore and there was no sympathy.

"You are a tool of the Gods," he would tell me. "And the Gods have little sympathy."

I believed this. For, what God would have a child treated this way' I fasted daily. Kallem would not let no food but steamed fish and rice. If I complained I was hungry, I would be made to cook dinner for he and the other God Speakers and sent to bed with none. If I complained that the bed roll I slept on was too hard, it was taken from me. If I cried out at night to have the candle left lit, they would shut me in my small stone room for a day and a night with no light and no bed roll.

Kallem said that the world is a cruel and harsh place. And that someday, when a God chose me as his Speaker, I would be tempted from faith with promise of riches and wealth. And that I must be taught, early, of the harshness of life that those who were not Speakers—not wealthy—not rich—I must understand how they live. I must understand the pangs of hunger, of sleeping on dust. I must not forget.

I thought that life was miserable.

I did not understand miserable. I did not understand pain, or hunger. I did not understand my own strength. Not until the Ten Tests.

That is when I understood how cruel life truly was.

____

And so it is to be observed, on the twelfth year of a Speaker's life that they must undergo the Ten.

The Ten tests which weed out those worthy and those unworthy of the Gods Voice.

The Test of Loyalty The Test of Hunger The Test of Sorrow The Test of Compassion The Test of Rage The Test of Strength The Test of Courage The Test of Mind The Test of Spirit And last, and most, perhaps taxing: The Test of Pain

Should an acolyte pass all ten, then may they be marked by their passing. Each of his or her ten finger tips marked in red-rings to signify what was lost and what was gained in their triumph of passing.

For those who do not pass...Let their bodies be burned with the highest offerings. Let their names resound in memory, for though they failed, they withstood such conditions only the few, the Chosen, could willingly do.

—From the Sacred Rituals, Speaker Ho'shia, fourth of his name.